Gloomhaven Prequel Announced

While Isaac Childres’ ambitious Euro-style adventure game Gloomhaven hasn’t even yet made it into the hands of Kickstarter backers, that hasn’t stopped the designer from announcing his next game, Founders of Gloomhaven.

Childres describes the game as a competitive Euro-style game in which players are compelled to work together to combine the necessary resources required to build the city of Gloomhaven on a shared board. In terms of setting and theme, Founders of Gloomhaven will take place hundreds of years prior to the events described in the first game, and will offer players a much smaller game than the behemoth that is Gloomhaven.

The game will include elements of worker placement, tile placement, and auctioneering set within the universe established by Gloomhaven. Players will look to their chosen factions to gather specific resources, and forge alliances with other players at the table to construct the buildings necessary to fill out the burgeoning city. Childres has also again tapped artists Alexandr Elichev Josh T. McDowell to work on Founders of Gloomhaven, hopefully giving both it and the original game a bit of visual symmetry.

Childres further notes that as this will be a much more modestly-sized game, it will also include “a very minimal insert.” A design snafu and manufacturing misstep involving the Gloomhaven insert recently pushed the game’s release into early 2017.

The designer is looking to launch a Kickstarter for Founders of Gloomhaven in February.